


The Intern Incident

by themerrygentleman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themerrygentleman/pseuds/themerrygentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's surprisingly easy to take a wrong turn out of Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and wind up in a little desert town called Night Vale. A fact which Darcy Lewis finds out the hard way one morning...to Jane Foster's exasperation and concern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Jane Foster’s phone buzzed that morning, she ignored it.

The phone was on a table just a few feet away, but her bed was entirely too warm and comfortable to leave just yet. She had passed out after a long night of analyzing star charts and had no desire to get up any time before eleven, and it would take a lot more than one text message to change her mind.

Jane gazed sleepily at the phone for a few seconds, turned over, and was asleep again a minute later.

Whereupon her phone immediately buzzed again.

 _Probably SHIELD,_ she reflected hazily, suspended somewhere between sleep and consciousness, just aware enough to be annoyed. _They’re so touchy about being ignored. Bunch of pushy jerks with their expensive suits and black helicopters…you know what, I’m gonna…I just…I’m…_

And consciousness slowly drifted away again.

This process repeated itself twice more, her phone consistently buzzing every couple of minutes, until finally Jane’s irritation outweighed her sleepiness and she stumbled out of bed, blinking and yawning and composing a very passive-aggressive reply in her head.

The text messages, though, weren’t from SHIELD. Jane looked at the name DARCY at the top of the screen, head tilted quizzically. Her intern wasn’t exactly a morning person, and getting this many texts from her at this hour was _definitely_ unusual.

The messages themselves only deepened her confusion.

_Jane we’re out of coffee and eggs so I took the van and I’m gonna go grocery shopping because I NEED COFFEE_

_Jane I think I took a wrong turn_

_Jane where am I_

Jane took a deep breath and gritted her teeth, her grip on the phone tightening. _Just typical,_ she thought acidly, beginning to compose a reply.

_How am I supposed to know that? All you said was you took a wrong turn…_

She only had time to glare at the phone for a few more moments before she got a response.

_Look at the area code and Mapquest it or something! I’m like REALLY lost here._

Followed almost immediately by

_Okay never mind there’s a store I can ask for directions_

Jane let out a long, exasperated sigh, put her phone back on the table, and decided that as long as Darcy had gotten her up at this ungodly hour, she might as well make breakfast while she waited for the sun to put in an appearance.

Half a bowl of Raisin Bran later, a loud buzzing noise made itself known from the other end of the table. Glaring at her phone again as it lay there innocently, Jane briefly considered just not picking it up, but she was all too aware that if she ignored it, Darcy would just keep texting her. She let out a long sigh and reached across the table.

The new messages read:

_Okayyy, that was weird._

_I asked the guy at the store for directions and he just stared right at me and said “You know the way. You have always known the way. And the way has always known you.”_

_Not really sure what that means, dude…but I’m just gonna back slowly away now, thanks._

_And there was this guy on the radio in the background and I have NO idea what he was saying but it sounded really freaky. Even though his voice is kind of amazingly hot._

A new text came in just as she finished reading:

_Jane, I think I’m in the first ten minutes of a horror movie._

Jane frowned at her phone, and then just stayed in that position for a few minutes, staring at the screen as her tea got steadily colder.

A little over two months ago, Jane Foster the run-of-the-mill astrophysics researcher would have rolled her eyes and dismissed Darcy’s text messages as so much unnecessary melodrama. But she was all too aware that she wasn’t just Jane Foster the run-of-the-mill astrophysics researcher anymore. Because two months ago, a god had fallen out of the sky and right into the path of her van, and the world had suddenly gotten a whole lot bigger.

Sometimes she could go whole days without thinking about it, but other times, it was vividly apparent to her that in a world where people could visit from beyond the stars, anything could happen. Even to someone like Darcy.

Jane Foster cast one last, wistful glance at her nice warm bed, sent a quick text message to Dr. Erik Selvig, and started getting dressed.

 

_(to be continued)_


	2. Chapter 2

To Jane’s boundless relief, Erik Selvig brewed very strong coffee.

The conversation didn’t really start until she’d made it most of the way through the first mug; in the meantime, she simply pushed her phone across the table to him and watched him read through Darcy’s text messages, his expression slowly growing more alarmed.

“Did you look up the area code?” Dr. Selvig finally asked, as Jane drained the last of the mug’s contents and reached for the coffeepot to replenish it.

“I _tried,_ ” she grumbled, “but nothing came up for that number. Apparently it doesn’t exist. Which, you know, was yet another indication that something really weird is going on here.”

Selvig ran a hand across his stubbly chin, squinting. “That sounds familiar,” he mused. “Something I heard once….yes, that was it. Someone I used to do research with, back in the old days. I got a call from him once at three in the morning, out of nowhere. He was incoherent—babbling. Told me he’d made an incredible discovery. A place where time didn’t work. I tried tracing the call, and just like this time, I came up with nothing.”

Dr. Selvig pushed his chair back and looked out the window, his expression grim. Jane almost didn’t want to keep pressing him on the subject, but it wasn’t long before her curiosity won out.

“….So, uh, what happened to him?” she finally ventured.

Dr. Selvig sighed. “A week later he was declared dead. Obituaries in the papers and everything. But that hasn’t stopped him from sending me a jar of homemade apricot preserves every fall. No letters, no explanations of what really happened to him, just…jam.”

Jane stared. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was faintly, absurdly amused at herself: _You were hanging out with gods from another world just a month ago,_ she told herself. _How does anything still seem weird to you?_

_….but really, this is on a whole other level,_ she had to admit to herself eventually. _At least the Asgardians made some kind of sense. Right now, I don’t even know where to start._

Her phone chose that moment to buzz again.

  _I don’t know what I was so worried about,_ the new message read. _Okay, the guy at the store was kinda weird, but this mostly just looks like a normal small town. There’s a bowling alley, an Arby’s, a big old-fashioned library…you know, normal stuff._

Jane read the message three times and breathed out a long sigh. “You know, maybe it’s nothing,” she told Dr. Selvig. “After dealing with Thor and everything, I think we’re starting to see weird otherworldly things everywhere we look. What about Occam’s Razor? What about looking for the simplest and most elegant explanation? I bet Darcy’s just really lost and exaggerating everything. That’d be typical of her, anyway.”

Dr. Selvig looked like he was starting to nod in agreement, but then Jane’s phone buzzed. _There’s even a sweet little old lady on her front porch waving at me…_ was the first message, and Jane was about to shrug and relax, when a new barrage of messages arrived.

_OH GOD NEVER MIND_

_THERE WAS A THING BEHIND HER AND IT HAD ALL THESE EYES AND OH GOD OH GODLSDAKJF;_

Jane could feel herself going pale. “Okay, I was wrong,” she told Selvig. “Come on, we’re going to need help on this. SHIELD owes me one….”

* * *

“Ah, yes, Miss Foster. Might I inquire as to the reason for this call? Please tell me Thor and his buddies aren’t blowing up the Southwest again; we just finished classifying everything from the first time….”

Jane blinked in surprise at the very familiar voice. “Agent Coulson? I was expecting SHIELD voicemail or something.”

“Well, when you’re personally connected to the discovery of sentient beings from another world, I think you’ll find that we kind of prioritize your calls,” Coulson responded without missing a beat. “So, tell me, what can our ‘battalion of jackbooted thugs’ do for you today?”

“Okay, first of all, those were Dr. Selvig’s words, not mine,” said Jane hotly, “and second, even if I _did_ say that, you stole my research, so I think it’d be understandable. But still, the past is the past, and right now, I need help. My intern is in the middle of something really weird.”

“You had a god living in your trailer just a month ago,” Coulson pointed out, echoing Jane’s own thoughts from a few minutes previous. “What counts as ‘really weird’ for you?”

“I wouldn’t be calling you if I knew for sure,” Jane said, pacing restlessly around Dr. Selvig’s kitchen table as she spoke. “Darcy disappeared, and started sending me texts from an area code that apparently doesn’t exist. She says she’s lost in this little town, but a lot of what she’s telling me doesn’t make any sense. She mentioned some sort of…thing with too many eyes. Do you have files on that? Please tell me you have files on that….”

Dr. Selvig was attempting to tell her something via a series of urgent but not-very-comprehensible gestures. “One sec,” Jane told Coulson, and put her hand over the phone. “Okay, what the hell are you trying to say?”

“Tell him I think it has something to do with the disappearance of Agent Peters fifteen years ago,” Dr. Selvig said. “That’s the apricot jam guy. He should know what I mean.”

“Okay.” Jane brought the phone back up to her face. “Sorry about that. Erik says he might have a lead on whatever this place is. Do the phrases ‘Agent Peters’ and ‘apricot preserves’ mean anything to you?”

There was a very long pause, long enough that Jane started to worry that she’d accidentally hung up.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance for that,” Coulson replied at last, his tone as neutral as ever. “ _I_ don’t even have the clearance for most of it. Yes, I know what Erik’s referring to, and yes, it’s a real place, and yes, we’re aware of some of its…peculiarities. We’ve had dealings with them every once in a while. But beyond that, I’m really not at liberty to divulge…”

“Of _course_ you’re not.” Jane took a deep breath and started running through stellar magnitude classifications in her head to calm herself down. “Okay, so if you’re not gonna tell us anything, I guess Erik and I will just have to go check it out firsthand. So…we’re going to go do that now.”

“Miss Foster…Jane…I know you’re concerned, but even so, I would strongly recommend thinking twice before…”

“Good talk,” said Jane, and hit the End Call button.

She turned back to Dr. Selvig. “Okay, please tell me you know a way we can track where Darcy’s texts are coming from, ‘cause the guys in suits aren’t in a really helpful mood today.”

He ran a hand through his already rumpled hair. “I’ll call in a few favors. Grab some of your scanning equipment—I get the feeling you might need it.”

* * *

It took longer than Jane would have liked, and every minute she waited was another minute of imagining Darcy being dragged away by many-eyed monsters. She and her intern had survived a lot together, and Jane had long since learned that underestimating Darcy never ended well for anyone involved. But all the same, something about this situation was giving her a really bad feeling.

_I really want to believe she’s making this up just to mess with me, but I don’t have enough data to speculate. What if those things she was talking about were actual, real monsters or aliens or something? What’s she gonna do, annoy them to death?_

At long last, they hit the road, Dr. Selvig driving and Jane glued to her cell phone, trying to get ahold of Darcy again. Dr. Selvig had given her a tracking program to download, courtesy of one of his many mysterious “old friends.” Apparently, as soon as Darcy texted Jane back, the program would automatically start honing in on her location, no matter where on Earth she was. _Which would have seemed pretty creepy a couple of months ago,_ Jane reflected, _but then everything that happened…happened. And, I mean, I’ve got one of the Men in Black on speed dial. I guess this is my life now…_

She glared at her last message ( _Darcyyy, can you please text me back? We’re out looking for you now_ ), which sat there stubbornly at the bottom of the screen with no response below it. It would be just like Darcy Lewis, really, to go completely incommunicado at the one moment Jane really needed to hear from her…

What felt like a small eternity later, her phone finally buzzed. _Oh good,_ it said.

“That’s _it?_ ” Jane demanded aloud, making Dr. Selvig glance over at her in mild confusion, but apparently the brief message had been enough—unfamiliar icons lit up all over her screen as the new program started working.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before more messages started coming in—although, as Jane had suspected would happen, they only made things even more confusing.

_Sorry about dropping off the map—cell phone reception here is kind of weird_

_Asked someone about it and she just said it was because of the dog park_

_But she said dog park the same way most people say, like, death_

_Or broccoli_

“You were right, Jane. There’s got to be a perfectly understandable explanation for all of this,” Dr. Selvig said after she had relayed all of this to him, sounding uneasy. “We just need more data, and once we get them, I’m sure it’ll all make sense.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? ‘Cause it kind of sounds like it could be either. And anyway, it sounds like Agent Peters didn’t agree with you…”

“That’s not the point,” Selvig grumbled. “I’m just saying, _everything_ seems mysterious and supernatural until you know how it works. Nine times out of ten, the explanation is perfectly ordinary.”

“You said it yourself—don’t we need more data before we start jumping to conclusions? Because the last time something like this happened, the answer _wasn’t_ really completely ordinary…”

Jane’s phone buzzed again, sparing the two of them from yet another rehashing of _that_ argument. She was still getting used to the tracking program, but it looked like it was making progress.

_I tried to call you, Jane, but somehow it connected me to Thor instead,_ Darcy reported. _I guess this place can connect to his space palace or whatever, which is cool. I mean, it’s really weird, but still._

Jane could feel her heart pounding. _Speak of the devil,_ she thought absurdly, and almost wanted to laugh. _Or the Norse god, rather. The odds for getting a rational explanation for all this are not looking good right now…_

_I asked if he could figure out where I was,_ Darcy continued, _and he asked this guy called_

_um_

_Himedul?_

_Himdle?_

(There followed an aggravatingly long pause in the messages. Jane glared out the window at the blurry shapes of passing cacti, like it was all their fault.)

_…okay I Googled it it’s Heimdall and he’s supposed to be like all-seeing or something_

_But apparently Heimdall doesn’t know where I am either, or he knows but he can’t tell me for some weird Norse god reason, so, y’know, that sucks._

“Do you have something?” Selvig asked, a little impatiently.

“Yeah. I think.” Trying very hard not to think too much just yet about the implications of what Darcy had said, Jane switched back over to the tracking program, which was now spitting out constantly updating driving directions. “Okay…um…I think you’re going to want to take the next exit.”  
“ _That_ one?” Selvig pointed out the window at a very rapidly approaching exit sign.

“Wait…hang on a second, this thing is confusing…”

“ _Jane, we’re going to miss it!”_

“ _Yeah, it’s that one, take that one!_ ”

There followed a mighty screeching of tires and honking of horns, and Jane pitched sideways and smacked into the window. In all the confusion, she completely missed the buzz of an incoming text, and it was another few moments before she looked back at her phone and noticed the new-message icon.

For a moment, this message made even less sense than the ones that had preceded it:

_Jane? You should turn on the radio. I think you’re going to want to hear this._

Jane frowned at the screen for a few seconds, but then the relevant piece of information clicked satisfyingly into place in her mind: one of Darcy’s earlier texts had said something about an unsettling radio broadcast. _What station?_ she texted Darcy back.

_You’ll know it when you hear it,_ was the only response. Jane looked over at Dr. Selvig, raised her eyebrows and shrugged theatrically, and turned the radio on.

She only had to switch past a few music stations before she found something promising: a male voice narrating what sounded like local news.

The voice was a smooth, rich baritone, placing deliberate and slightly menacing emphasis on almost every syllable. Only a few sentences in, Jane understood completely why Darcy had wanted her to hear this:

_Listeners, I bring you an important community update. I’ve just received a text message from John Peters—you know, the farmer?—who wishes to inform us that emissaries from a vague, yet menacing government agency are rapidly approaching our town._

_Now, I know what you’re thinking_ , the voice continued, its tone having shifted instantly from ominous to affable and conversational. _“Cecil, aren’t you supposed to be telling us something we don’t already know? Of course government agents are watching us! They are always watching! Every moment of our lives is being meticulously recorded and catalogued for unknown and sinister purposes! That’s just a part of life.” And, of course, you’re right. But for whatever reason, John Peters seems to think we have reason to be afraid, beyond your average, everyday level of nonspecific dread._

Just as quickly as the announcer’s voice had shifted gears from foreboding to pleasant a minute before, it now shifted back, taking on an almost spectral monotone. _“They are coming,” he said in his message. “The witnesses to the forgotten gods, the people of echoing thunders. They know I am here, and they will not be halted, and they are coming for”—and then I think he ran out of characters for the text. But, I mean, the last time I heard him sounding this upset was when the price of imaginary corn took a hit last month, so…more on this story as it develops, I guess._

Dr. Selvig was giving the radio a look, one with the mixture of wariness and intense concentration he usually reserved for potentially explosive or radioactive lab experiments. “What _is_ this place?” he muttered under his breath.

“There’s your answer, said Jane, pointing. Ahead of them, to the side of the road, there stood a weathered billboard, emblazoned with four words.

_Welcome to Night Vale._


End file.
